GLBL 016. Migration in a Globalized World

Migration is one of the most contentious issues of our time. Today, there are over 1 billion migrants globally, representing about 1 in 8 people on the planet. This includes over 763 million internal migrants, 304 million international migrants, and 123 million forcibly displaced individuals. In this course, we will consider the causes and consequences of these movements from the perspective of both receiving as well as sending societies. In doing so, we will strive to understand how migration both shapes and is shaped by a complex interplay of institutional, historical, economic, and political factors. Specifically, we will examine how migrants have been conceptualized in existing academic and policy discourse, when and why people move and what informs these decisions, how immigration reshapes receiving societies economically, culturally, and politically, how states respond to immigration and emigration, and what the economic and political effects of emigration are for societies of origin. We will cover the full richness of migration across the world, engaging with historical and contemporary case studies from the United States, Latin America, Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Our examination of migration will span various scales, from the macro-level of nation-states to the micro-scale of municipalities, households, and the individual. The primary goal of this course is for students to understand the multicausal nature of migration, and to appreciate the connections between migration and contemporary debates on citizenship, identity, economic development, social cohesion, and political stability.
1 credit.
Eligible for ESCH
Fall 2025. Dhar, Shashwat
Spring 2026. Dhar, Shashwat
Catalog chapter: Global Studies
Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/global-studies

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